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About Lords of Finance

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize

“A magisterial work…You can’t help thinking about the economic crisis we’re living through now.” —The New York Times Book Review

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

About Lords of Finance

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize

With penetrating insights for today, this vital history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s offers unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions taken by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.

In Lords of Finance, we meet the neurotic and enigmatic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, the xenophobic and suspicious Émile Moreau of the Banque de France, the arrogant yet brilliant Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose façade of energy and drive masked a deeply wounded and overburdened man. After the First World War, these central bankers attempted to reconstruct the world of international finance. Despite their differences, they were united by a common fear–that the greatest threat to capitalism was inflation–and by a common vision that the solution was to turn back the clock and return the world to the gold standard.

For a brief period in the mid-1920s they appeared to have succeeded. The world’s currencies were stabilized and capital began flowing freely across the globe. But beneath the veneer of boom-town prosperity, cracks started to appear in the financial system. The gold standard that all had believed would provide an umbrella of stability proved to be a straitjacket, and the world economy began that terrible downward spiral known as the Great Depression.

As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, the Great Depression and the year 1929 remain the benchmark for true financial mayhem. Offering a new understanding of the global nature of financial crises, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, of their fallibility, and of the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

About Lords of Finance

Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize

“A magisterial work…You can’t help thinking about the economic crisis we’re living through now.” —The New York Times Book Review

It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.

About Liaquat Ahamed

LIAQUAT AHAMED holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He worked as a professional economist at the World Bank during the 1980s and since then as an investment manager.

About Liaquat Ahamed

LIAQUAT AHAMED holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He worked as a professional economist at the World Bank during the 1980s and since then as an investment manager.

About Liaquat Ahamed

LIAQUAT AHAMED holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He worked as a professional economist at the World Bank during the 1980s and since then as an investment manager.

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Praise

“A magisterial work…As you learn how the world spiraled into depression…you can’t help thinking about the economic crisis we’re living through now.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The rich and charming story of the end of the world.”—Time

“Lords of Finance is highly readable …. That it should appear now, as history threatens to repeat itself, compounds its appeal.”—Niall Ferguson, Financial Times

“There is terrific prescience to be found in [Lords of Finance’s] portrait of times past…[A] writer of great verve and erudition, [Ahamed] easily connects the dots between the economic crises that rocked the world during the years his book covers and the fiscal emergencies that beset us today. He does this winningly enough to make his book about an international monetary horror story seem like a labor of love… Mr. Ahamed does a superlative job of explaining the ever-germane way the problems of one shyster, one bank, one treasury or one economy can set off repercussions all around the globe.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“This absorbing study of the first collective of central bankers is provocative, not least because it is still relevant.”—The Economist

“This is narrative history at its most vivid, an epic portrait of how the predecessors of Ben Bernanke, Jean-Claude Trichet and Mervyn King helped shove economies into the abyss in 1929…His reportorial style has the Barbara Tuchman touch. Learned yet unpretentious, he dips into diaries, letters and cables to pull out evocative vignettes…Central bankers, [Ahamed] says, can resemble Sisyphus in Greek mythology— condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. Like Alan Greenspan, the four men described here saw their apparent successes melt into failure.”—Bloomberg News

“The parallels evidenced by Ahamed between state of the world financial system then and now add to the fascination of this remarkable achievement in history, biography and analysis.”—Fort Worth Star Telegram “An outstanding book…[Ahamed] found a fascinating frame for relating global economic history from the beginning of World War I until the dying days of World War II.”—The Houston Chronicle

“[Ahamed’s] protagonists’ high-wire efforts to stave off national bankruptcies furnish Ahamed with plenty of drama to highlight his engrossing analysis of the complexities of monetary policy.”—Publishers Weekly

“Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic history of the lead-up to the Great Depression as seen through the careers of the West’s principal bankers…Spellbinding, insightful and, perhaps most important, timely.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Books grounded in history sometimes offer an eerie resonance for contemporary readers. Rarely has that statement seemed truer than with Lords of Finance.”—Steve Weinberger, Dallas Morning News

“[A] wonderful new history”—Newsweek

Awards

Arthur Ross Book AwardWINNER

Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year AwardWINNER